ABBA Interview: Björn Ulvaeus On Making ABBA's Timeless Hits

with a legacy of Timeless hits and a voice that shaped the soundtrack of an era Bjorn Alvarez from the iconic band Abba needs little introduction as one-fourth of the Swedish super group his contributions to music have transcended borders and generations in my interview we discussed not only the process of writing recording with Abba but also his recent experiences with AI Technologies here's my interview Bjorn welcome thank you okay so I'm going to ask you about Abba but I want to talk to you about AI okay we start there what are your thoughts on where we are now and where things are going with AI well I had an AI model demonstrated to me a couple of weeks ago by one of the really big tech companies okay I was blown away about the potential what what they showed me was mind-boggling okay and what you've heard so far is is nothing against what's coming okay and I'm getting nervous yeah well you know you you have to be defensive and offensive at the same time as as a Creator because it's a fantastic tool it will be the most fantastic co-writer you will ever have but on the other hand these AI models will be training on music that people have written right I don't know if it's too late but but certainly we have to fight for the writers of that music so that they can get remunerated in some form or other I don't know if they'll be able to opt out if they don't want to be trained on but I suspect that it's going to be very difficult to prove whether a model is trained on on on other music or not because from what I heard coming out from that demonstration was that the melody if you if you ask it to write an avalike Melody you would never be able to recognize that you you'll never be able to hear that it's come from Benny and me if it's sung by someone else right which in this case it was and and then it's so so it'll be so difficult to trace and to track hopefully um these big companies will be good guys and and I I think some of them want to be on the side of the creators okay rather than against right now the things that are popping up at least on YouTube things I've talked about there's uh people taking young Paul McCartney training his voice using Beatles multi-tracks voices voices yeah that that this is one part of it right and then taking a a song that Paul McCartney this is a thing that I talked about in a video it took a song that Paul did when he was 71 but put young Paul McCartney's voice on it yeah okay the people they're doing the demonstration for you are they saying have you did you talk about how do people get credited as we did okay and what did they say what they wanted to talk about okay this is what's happening right now we have to find a way but nobody's claiming yet that we know exactly where to go because as I said it's very very very difficult to say what it has been trained on unless you what what you described which is much much easier because that is a voice that you recognize right the style of recording the style of writing Melodies not necessarily easy to detect right but the prompt the instruction to the AI model that's where you could go and if there's someone in the prompt like Abba like but with a hint of Queen sung by Frank Sinatra but then you connect at least you know identify who who has been who it's been trained on but how do you then distribute whatever payment comes out of that this is a huge problem for the music industry and one that is being talked about you know as we speak around the globe I have a theory you're going to have on platforms like Spotify Abba and Abba AI The Beatles Beatles AI Elton John and Elton John AI eventually and people I think will accept those things do you think that the artists will accept themselves that there's an AI version of their music I I don't know because I haven't been exposed to it you know it might be good it might be that these uh AI songs point back to the the original and and may make the original stream better right we don't know that as I said it at the same time it's a fantastic tool let's say I want to write something for a musical and it needs to be a tangle and I asked the AI model to give me a suggestion based on the 10 best Tangos in ever written and he comes up with ideas and I would say oh that's not bad I'll keep that right but then I'll tweak it and I'll do something myself and I might ask for a lyric idea you know yeah I will use it as a tool like like a synth or like anything you use in songwriting so that's exciting to me as as a Creator I've heard from friends that are in Nashville that in all these writing sessions that the Nashville writer is doing that they use chat GPT yeah you do already yeah yeah is there something that needs to be embedded in these things that will enable you to know how these models are trained as far as I know after the event it's very hard to trace okay so it needs to be transparent from the beginning or the prompt the instruction what that contains otherwise I only see like a blanket license for the a label and a publisher and the CMO gives a DSP your blanket light or an AI model a blanket license to use its catalog and then pays a fee for that which is then distributed in in some way to the creators it's very complicated but and who figures this out because these are these are a lot being figured out right now if you speak yeah and nobody's you know agreed to what it would where it will end yet we're having this discussion while so many other discussions are going on did you ever think could you ever have imagined a world like this when you were making records back in 1975 1976 no Eve I mean that was even before the first synth the first move mini move yeah when we did Mamma Mia yeah the song the the synths hadn't come on to the stage yet the desk wasn't computerized we had 16 or or eight I can't remember now but there were three of us sitting in front of the desk like this a military like like exercise would you I said I had the responsibility for the right side and Benny the middle and and our engineer the left and and we did that over and over again until everything was you know we thought perfect would you mix sections and then edit the splice the uh no it would mix the whole thing oh my yeah so there was an echo up in that place and then back you know okay how many passes would it take to get a mix sometimes what would be a lot would you get it sometimes 10 times sometimes one time if if we really were convinced and now it's it's finished it's time to mix yeah maybe 10 times sometimes more so thanks for so much easier in a way yeah we were you know sometimes very lucky to end up with a mix like Mamma Mia which is so incredibly good even today yes there's nothing there that I think oh that day should have been slightly louder there's nothing which is not the case for some songs that I won't mention wait there were there's things about it where you're like I can't remember what I used to hate about the mix or whatever right there must be some things like that I remember that I I would think oh I should have that Hiatus a bit slightly a bit too loud but then the record came out and you forgot right so it wasn't that important after all and now let's see you have have ideas and you maybe abandoned something but you know it has this is a good verse or this may be a good Bridge or something yeah were you the guy that would say hey I remember this this thing that we did three weeks ago and there's there's a bridge here that I think would fit with this other song we both did that okay you and Benny both would do that yeah yes we we never put anything on tape okay and we never wrote anything down okay how did you remember things it was only the the stuff that really stuck you know that that we've ever used there's several Bridges and several verses you know like around in in our hi model human intelligence model right something would come up and one of us would you know click and think hey you know remember that one and then sometimes beautifully it would just integrate with the other bit would you refer to sections like how would would you call verse verse B part pre-chorus would you use terms like that to refer to your songs it would use terms like Intro instrumental verse Bridge chorus every ingredient everything had to be the best it could be so there was no having a great chorus so it doesn't matter about the verse let's let's take that verse because the chord is so good it was never like that it was always a matter of you know never finishing anything unless every part was there and of course when we went into the studio sometimes every part wasn't there but almost all of it some some stuff would come up in the studio of course but the song proper we would have written before we went into the studio when you wrote them you'd be playing guitar or having piano and then it's something the songs would be written around something yeah right and then you guys would rehearse them and you kind of know what the structure is and then you go in and you start tracking the song I I wouldn't say that when you always what the character of the song was we just had the song and the chords yeah and and then sometimes a song Would you know change and become something else than we had ever anticipated like dancing dancing queen for example starts kind of in the middle of the chorus right this is such an unusual arranging that was an edit okay that was an edit okay we had uh yeah it was too long and we I don't know who came up with the idea to well we could stop there instead and that was great it's brilliant yeah kind of illustrates how um the human mind Works a bit like AI as well you know if we gather all this information in the form of songs when we grow up and we never never stop I think and we use it as inspiration as as an Impulse to do something I can say that dancing queen was inspired by um a big hit um in the U.S called Rock Your Baby so when you're dancing queen has nothing to do with rock you baby right but the groove and that slow kind of disco groove right was something that oh that's that's interesting there's nothing wrong with that I I think that's how pop music evolves absolutely yeah if you take a track like that when you when you would start recording a track so you have the song structure and everything and you start layering things because your records are so beautifully produced how long would it take for you to figure to decide that you had the right Groove for the song the right Tempo with these things would would you try it a bunch of times yeah but we had musicians in the studio yeah we had another guitar player and a bass and and and uh drums yep the five of us would sit in the studio I would write a demo lyric and Benny and I would play the song and gradually the guys would you know come in and we'd be doing that until we felt well this might be something okay we would stop you know say to the day basically oh remember that that's that's great and he was and they were so disciplined so that then he'd stick to that okay for for that part of the song right and that's how we would work and eventually I would get out and get up here into the studio and it would continue until we had a basic backing track would that typically be one one day or so yeah and what would be the backing track would it be piano bass drums and one guitar part something like that one one guitar bass comes and and a piano or or a scent of some kind data we would have that basic backing track and then Benny would do Bobby dabs once the synths came into our world I mean it was you know so many possibilities and and uh and once we had we felt this is what this song is about that's when I would write the lyric not until then because I had done and I had regretted it because it was always wrong because the the the the song would change its atmosphere it's shown sometimes and and all together so because of the the actual sound of the track right it would have a certain yes vibe to it that that would suggest a mood for the lyric yeah not only a mood it would conjure up like images sometimes in me when I was I would have played by you know again and again because I trusted in the fact that it would tell me what it's about either in the form of a line the hook or in the form of something happening like Knowing Me Knowing you I I could clearly see a man in this case walking from room to room with boxes all packed up empty rooms and what was going through his mind at that moment like like a almost cinematic writing a lyric is uh something in between a poem and and um a Melody right because a lyric should a Top lyrics should have you know the percussive qualities that the melody and the track demands explain that a little more so for instance take a chance on me yeah it comes from because it sounded like that so when you're sitting there with your notepad or whatever writing your lyrics you're thinking about these things only afterwards only when I played the track back with a with a overdubs on it would you sit typically in the studio and do that or would you take home I would sit at home what would be a short time to write a lyric versus a long time some some songs I wrote several I think Chiquitita we tried two two other lyrics because the ladies would come into the studio and see me it wouldn't sound right okay and then it was a matter of going back to the drawing board would it not sound right because just hearing them sing it and you're like it doesn't doesn't work yeah intuitively not knowing exactly why but right now this isn't right it's a field right and that's where I think an AI cannot you know right compete this AI this company that played you these this new new AI what do we call this a refer to AI models models yeah and there will be many such models out there I think they're quite expensive to build okay the a really good one so there might not be so many to start with what is in it for the companies like Spotify and apple music do the labels say we're not going to let you use any of our music we're going to create our own streaming platforms where we put all of our own artists out and we're going to use our own AI this seems like this is a whole nother problem yes it is and one huge problem is the number of songs being uploaded and you can imagine with AI as well the dsps have to put some kind of filter or the aggregators through which the songs flow in O and and the labels right they have to put some filters in there we can't have AI songs millions of them dilute that's right um the royalties for the real artists and the real songwriters I haven't spoken to any representatives of dsps yet about that but I imagine they're thinking about it because for one thing the storage costs so much money yes and the energy that's being wasted and all this forgive me but being uploaded yeah the other problem is how will we remunerate the creators of the music that it's trained on when you have so much music out there people now rely on algorithms to suggest things yeah what keeps a Spotify from pushing their own AI artists over actual real artists the music industry right now are talking about R6 artist-centric user-centric subscription models okay that could be one solution that um you you actually only pay the artists who you're playing so then the unplayed AI is not being paid but because no one who subscribes wants to listen to it right as easy as that right I I've been talking about user-centric for a long time and I think it's it's it's one thing that has to be really seriously considered now with AI coming in who makes these decisions though ultimately right ultimately the big bosses in the music industry uh and and there I talk about the labels the Publishers the dsps all of them are they nervous are they excited about this about about this technology both what I hear they're both nervous and excited and it depends on who you talk to of course some people only see the negative side well I personally believe that your the average listener out there will accept AI music if it's good they don't care if it's not not created by a human I I agree with you from what I've heard so far I I could potentially think that I'm I'm listening to either a radio station or I happen to stream something which I think are wonderful this is great and it could be AI right that's going to happen I I think great music is created from The Human Experience Deep Emotions and all that stuff AI can't handle AI can just you know guess what comes next the fan basis will be much more important and people will want to feel closeness to the artist that they that they love I mean I'm an avatar myself but I I doubt that that avatars that people will be okay with avatars I want to ask you about this when you created your avatars yeah okay the actual uh what do you call it motion capture or something when you they put the sensors on and yeah they put them all over your body right and you were yeah we were dressed in some kind of black leotards okay with uh little bulbs on them okay and and helmets and and dots in our faces and to make it easier for the cameras and the computers to register how we moved around okay and you were actually singing to your you're basically playing and lip syncing to your own tracks right we were doing exactly the same thing we did in front of TV cameras in the in the 70s exactly the same thing only this time for 70 year olds you know looking ridiculous could you ever have imagined that no of course not I thought he was the end of it in the 80s they might play the odd song but otherwise Abba would be forgotten Abba has so many young fans my kids I have my kids are 16 14 and 10. they know your music why has your music lasted for so long yeah I I really honestly don't know and I'm okay with that right but but as soon as people start trying to explain it feels good though doesn't it it feels really good yeah yes every day I'm reminded of it someone comes up to me and you can see in the face now I'm gonna tell him something that he hasn't heard before thank you for the music but it's so sweet but you don't need to know why exactly why you just have to accept it I I listen to some of the songs back to back with something new it still sounds fresh it doesn't sound dated yes but but a lot of them don't when you guys would track uh track your vocals how would you delineate who was going to sing what was there an ABBA sound that you would always go for with the with the vocals well you just had to hear the two ladies and that was the other sound there's some unique quality uh when they sing together their blend they blend and especially when when freed us she's a metal and she strives to get up there with our nettes and soprano yeah there's a kind of metal in the sound that is distinct and you can hear it miles away do you think it's because she's in that her upper part of her range and there's a certain harmonic thing that happens between the two something happens between the two and and as far as who sings what it was a matter of you know this uh album oh I never already has three it's my turn so you would literally do stuff like that it's more like that laughs which I think is fair kind of like you would expect yeah yeah did they ever say why didn't you give me that song not that I can remember interesting it might have been you know that we might have played three or four songs to them and one of them would have said oh that's mine Bjorn I want to come back to something about the AI trained voice that has been appearing on YouTube is one of the places in Tick Tock there was A.I Drake song and um who owns that Drake voice that that's a very interesting question one that we've been thinking about you know being avatars and all of that name and likeness is an important thing can you copyright yourself or trademark yourself I think you must be able to the label owns the sound recording but I own my voice right and where is the distinction if if someone imitates Elvis right you can take that down no if an AI trains on your voice it's an imitation isn't it it is so legally how will you be able to take down John Lennon singing something else uh it's going to be very problematic some people say well this is obviously fair use this is original creation yeah so far we ever has many tribute bands right and I see that as a tribute I see that as fantastic that people even want to and have you been out to see an actual area I haven't uh no that's that's uh that's a little it's a bridge too far that's a bridge too far but I you know that's uh that's an homage to to an artist so if people wanna hear you sing or Solem me or maybe that's a tribute as well to your voice we have to be exposed to it I think before we even say anything right and we ain't seen nothing yet right it is amazing though the speed at which all these things developed in the last six months really yeah I I was a guest editor Radio 4 in um between Christmas and in in in the UK in uh between Christmas and New Year's Eve and I I spoke to a Google Guy high up in in the hierarchy and he he said to me then AI is going to explode this year and it did it really did so tell me about your app that you've been working on I've been interested in in artists and and songwriters writes for a long time you're the president of Seaside which is of course the umbrella Organization for all CMOS all PRS is bmis ascaps around the world yep and I'm I'm also the proud co-founder of a platform called session um and with the core idea to capture the relevant metadata the relevant identifiers for songwriters during the creative process because that is the secret to get faster and more accurate payments talk about how songwriters talk about ways that that writers and musicians miss out on money that they're deserved a recording is uploaded to Spotify but the metadata about the songwriters isn't on it right the label hasn't included that right and that means that Spotify doesn't know who to pay the money to and it goes into a black box and that black box has a lot of money in it yeah I don't know what what it's like today but but in the old days it used to be that the black box with you know within certain periods was distributed two Publishers and CMOS and and labels according to market share and what happened to it after that I don't know session then includes the metadata yeah who plays on the track it's about right the writing of the Zone okay writing inside because so so many songs are co-written today right 10 15 people and and they need to be uh included with their um identifiers numbers for neighboring rights and for the publishing right so everyone would have a use and the work has a certain code iswc and and the writers have their numbers unique numbers which would be like a social security number or what yes exactly there would always be their number yeah so that follows the Zone um into the recording and everything is there and once it's uploaded to Spotify uh everyone knows where to pay the money and as far as the songwriter splits are concerned all that is detailed in this yeah correct yeah yeah this prevents things like songs that have the same name yeah because that's what the CMOS have done in the past they are comparing texts right and it's Soul fashioned they still do if the right code is there from the word go doesn't matter what the song is called what do you do about music that's already in existence that doesn't have the metadata should everything be retrofitted with metadata yes it has to be manually uh you know that that song Or it must be them and that must be it and then they're manually matched one of the things that always frustrates me I I have I use both Apple music and Spotify the fact that there is such little data on the things many times the songwriters are missing there's nothing about what who the musicians are there's nothing about the producer in there typically that idea of of knowing who or contributing to these things is such an important point it is important and it's so unnecessary that it isn't there right because if you do it through if you register you capture it through a tool a platform like session Rich metadata would follow the work into the studio and and onwards and everybody would be on it who is on on that track and not only that they might have taken little videos in the studio that could be included anything wow and that's what we want Rich metadata when we listen to the music clickable Rich metadata absolutely why are you still interested in this do you feel like it's a responsibility to to be there for the songwriters it's part curiosity is and wanting to know what's going on and following what's going on but it's certainly also to to help if I can because but it's also exciting and interesting yeah and to have a reason to you know deep dive into this thing with AI now it's it's incredibly exciting when are artists are there other artists that are creating avatars of themselves that you know of uh or that maybe you wouldn't talk about but that have talked to you about this there must be of course there there have been many artists going to Abba Voyage in London um and I I would imagine that a lot of my peers would be thinking about this right now making Keith and and what have you out there um but I have not heard of anyone actually really attempting to do it yet it took years to do this right yeah and it's also there are so many ingredients it's not just you know putting lifelike avatars on a stage it needs to be a story there needs to be in depth it needs to be a fan base and the music catalog needs to be relevant yeah so many things need to be you know in place to do it I've I've discussed this with our creative team who who is next who could be next and also the fact that all four of us were alive and condone it authorized it yes gives it bread in a in a way that's important it's not speculation in in someone who's dead yeah artists that are not living obviously I read that Paul McCartney was putting together a Beatles song from a John Lennon demo or something like that and they're gonna use an AI trained John Lennon but what I understand from that is that there is a demo of John Lennon's singing singing that song yes and and it's just that the sound quality is bad yeah but with the help of AI you can extract that voice from the bad surrounding and isolate it and and enhance it but it is still an enemy to me that could be a good use of this yeah artists that are not with us anymore yeah I think that there's there's a lot of positives here I think a lot of people immediately go for the negative but I I've always been a well let's wait and see what happens with it if you hear one of your songs playing somewhere you're walking down the street you hear it will you listen do you think about it or do you just go on I'm still kind of humbled by it the fact that it's happening in it and you know I've been traveling a bit lately Singapore so Tokyo and various places and it's the same everywhere which is very very humbling how I ask myself every time how did this happen but when I hear it on sometimes in my in my car when maybe I listen to a radio station and they play something I I listen are you transported though when you listen are you transported back to the time or do you just kind of take the whole thing in do you want do you remember being there creating these no no sadly I don't okay I would say that the 70s for us was such a more creative explosion that that we have very I have very few memories with you know individual songs they because we would write three four we would go into the studio we would record them and mix them and then we'd be on to the next ones and they would be released and we would get the chance reports but we would be on to the next one when you're tracking the vocals in the studio if you've just written the song do you read lyrics would the girls be reading lyrics off lyric sheets they'd come in in the morning and and I give them copies of and and we'd sing it together like in this situation here yeah exactly this yeah that's how we'd start the day and this is exactly how we started 40 years later when we when you got back unexpectedly got back together and recorded a new album but that that was so familiar and so strange because we were you know did it feel just like it did was it just so familiar after a few seconds right it was weird but familiar okay lyrics and they were and we would go through and they would make you know notes and and uh and then they they'd walk out into the studio and and stand in front of the mics and and exactly the same Bjorn thank you so much for taking the time to sit here it's been really been a pleasure such an honor to meet you in person wow can't even believe it thank you that's all for now remember my channel is self-funded with no outside advertisers so if you want 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Channel: Rick Beato

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Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, björn ulvaeus, benny andersson, abba voyage, björn ulvaeus interview, björn ulvaeus singing, björn ulvaeus and benny andersson, abba voyage concert, agnetha faltskog, anni-frid lyngstad, abba, dancing queen abba, mamma mia songs, abba sos, gimmie gimmie gimmie, money money money

Id: wy6ZO1e4W3U

Length: 37min 30sec (2250 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 10 2023